This is extremely true, confirmation bias and all that. It’s good not to let yourself get too blinded by your own biases and experiences or to assume all experiences everywhere are reflective of those of you and those around you.
That said… double flaw. Sorry to the good ol’ boys out there.
Firstly, by definition even in the Information Age, your best source for news of the world is not a small town unless the news you want is specific to that town. The average city dweller has never started a tractor or repaired one. I would not likely ask or put much weight into their thoughts on how I shouldn’t repair and start my tractor. Especially if they don’t even have a tractor in their city.
And by definition, professors at a university are… educated. They likely finished… university. Students at a university are usually less educated than professors on average but still more educated than someone who didn’t continue school.
Granted you can learn a lot without school, and often what you learn is specific to your life circumstances. Functional knowledge based on experience. If your experience is limited to a certain area… well… I’ll put it this way, anyone can be good or bad at things but who do you want doing your heart operation if you have to pick one, an average medical student or an average small town citizen? Who do you want doing your taxes, a certified accounting graduate or a random small town citizen?
Sure SOMEONE in the town might have some gift- but if we pick a random certified tax accountant and a random small town person- which of those odds are better for you?
Flaw two is that universities often and generally represent students and even teachers from diverse backgrounds, from all over the country and the world. Different economic strata, upbringings, life experiences.. Soooo… again- you’re implying a comparison between a diverse group of people from different parts of the world and different upbringings reaching a unified conclusion to a group of people who share very similar backgrounds and upbringing from the same place and… those two things are equivalent.
So we have two problems. We are basically saying if the majority of the worlds doctors agree that eating vegetables is good for you but the majority of the worlds auto mechanics say it isn’t- that we should take the opinions of both the same since they are both insular groups. AND, we are basically saying that if a group made up of very different people reach the same conclusion that is as biased as a group of similar people reaching the same conclusion.
Now let’s discuss the third problem- the problem of “small towns.” The world is full of small towns. This meme and the phrase “small town” implies a rural, generally conservative meaning- but many- perhaps most of the “liberal elites” don’t come from places like San Francisco or Los Angeles- they live in one of the hundreds of small towns- some with 5 digit or less populations- littering the deserts and mountains and coasts of California. These towns are often within an hour or less of these major cities where these people often work and play.
Likewise, you’re probably more likely to find “conservatives” living in the high cost New York downtown set than liberals, who often live in small towns around the area or in Connecticut and other nearby states. So the idea that “small town America” is full of conservatives and such is misleading. We often use it as short hand for rural or provincial people who are often conservative- but that just isn’t the case.
What we do often dance around and sometimes it is literally a talking point, is the liberal bias often tied to higher education. Some argue higher education indoctrinates people to liberal thinking or that the nature of higher education means liberals are disproportionately represented at these institutions and the culture and curriculums reflect that. Another popular argument is that… education tends to impart a degree of what meant would consider liberal thinking unless those education systems are specifically built to exclude different types of people and thought.
Long ago society’s Jr higher education tended to be much more conservative and much more restrictive. In those tiles many notable conservative thinkers came from these institutions and were common in everyday life. That said- as education became less restrictive and less limited to certain classes and ethnic/racial groups, we started to see the association become much stronger between liberal thought and higher education. This argument holds that the natural outcome of placing a person who values human rights and has the intelligence to qualify for higher education in a position where they learn and experience different things that they would naturally take on certain ideas that are often deemed “liberal.”
In fact the more extreme conservatives reject and express hostility to higher education and especially to education which makes information available.
So take it how you will on that one, the jury is out, but based on points one and two we can see that if those two arguments, there is inherently more stock to be placed in the arguments of those who have an education and exposure to different types of people and experiences unless the matters being discussed fall into the field of expertise and fit specifically the conditions by which the less diverse and generally less educated group are experts in.
That said… double flaw. Sorry to the good ol’ boys out there.
Firstly, by definition even in the Information Age, your best source for news of the world is not a small town unless the news you want is specific to that town. The average city dweller has never started a tractor or repaired one. I would not likely ask or put much weight into their thoughts on how I shouldn’t repair and start my tractor. Especially if they don’t even have a tractor in their city.
And by definition, professors at a university are… educated. They likely finished… university. Students at a university are usually less educated than professors on average but still more educated than someone who didn’t continue school.
Sure SOMEONE in the town might have some gift- but if we pick a random certified tax accountant and a random small town person- which of those odds are better for you?
So we have two problems. We are basically saying if the majority of the worlds doctors agree that eating vegetables is good for you but the majority of the worlds auto mechanics say it isn’t- that we should take the opinions of both the same since they are both insular groups. AND, we are basically saying that if a group made up of very different people reach the same conclusion that is as biased as a group of similar people reaching the same conclusion.
What we do often dance around and sometimes it is literally a talking point, is the liberal bias often tied to higher education. Some argue higher education indoctrinates people to liberal thinking or that the nature of higher education means liberals are disproportionately represented at these institutions and the culture and curriculums reflect that. Another popular argument is that… education tends to impart a degree of what meant would consider liberal thinking unless those education systems are specifically built to exclude different types of people and thought.
So take it how you will on that one, the jury is out, but based on points one and two we can see that if those two arguments, there is inherently more stock to be placed in the arguments of those who have an education and exposure to different types of people and experiences unless the matters being discussed fall into the field of expertise and fit specifically the conditions by which the less diverse and generally less educated group are experts in.